Honeybee health in Africa—a review

Pirk, Christian W. W.; Strauss, Ursula; Yusuf, Abdullahi Ahmed; Démares, Fabien; Human, Hannelie

doi:10.1007/s13592-015-0406-6

Cited by 92 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 138 publications

(195 reference statements)

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“…, ; Pirk et al . ). In summary, Varroa had a devastating effect on a predominantly managed population of native honeybees in Europe and the managed population in North America.…”

Section: The Case Of the Western Honeybee A Melliferamentioning

confidence: 97%

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Risks and benefits of the biological interface between managed and wild bee pollinators

2016

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Summary1. Increasing global human populations and climate change not only increase the demand for food but require it to be supplied in sustainable quantities. One crucial aspect for sustainability is to ensure pollinator services for crop production and ecosystem services. 2. The global distribution of universal bee pollinators and the different degrees of intensity of bee-keeping have resulted in a high variability of impacts. It is therefore essential to separate the different pollinator populations, in particular the cases of honeybees and bumblebees, into wild/feral and managed populations, which can and will interact. 3. Such interactions can be either beneficial or deleterious. A deleterious interaction between wild/feral colonies and the managed populations may result in disease and pest transmission. 4. However, a wild/feral population could easily buffer the effects of newly introduced pathogens increasing the resistance of the population as a whole. Varroa mites that caused the loss of the wild population of Apis mellifera in Europe have recently been established in South Africa. Studies of the mite's introduction into South Africa suggest that African honeybee populations are less affected by the mite and can deal with and survive parasite loads which would kill colonies in the Northern Hemisphere. 5. This observed resilience in Africa and Americas is most likely based on the interactions between wild and managed bees, since a large proportion of the total honeybee population is wild in these regions and therefore not influenced by humans. This allows the wild population to adapt to new parasites/pathogens, without human interference, with the large numbers of wild colonies ensuring that resilience is high. A high ratio of wild to managed colonies could also ensure that beneficial adaptations in the wild population filter through to the managed population. 6. Whether a similar situation prevails in bumblebees with wild and managed populations needs to be more carefully examined, particularly in the context of the global trade in colonies of these bees. Our current understanding of the interaction between wild/feral and managed populations suggests that transporting of species out of their endemic range should be done with great caution.

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“…, ; Pirk et al . ). In summary, Varroa had a devastating effect on a predominantly managed population of native honeybees in Europe and the managed population in North America.…”

Section: The Case Of the Western Honeybee A Melliferamentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The conservation and protection of both managed and unmanaged populations is of particular importance where both populations share a significant interface as with honeybees in Africa where bee‐keeping depends on swarms trapped from the wild (Dietemann, Pirk & Crewe ; Pirk et al . ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Risks and benefits of the biological interface between managed and wild bee pollinators

2016

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“…Despite their role in colony destruction, occurrence and distribution, honeybee pests remain understudied within the Africa tropics, with investigations restricted to Kenya, Malawi and South Africa [6]. Furthermore, data on in-country variations from one agro-ecological zone to another are scarce.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, data on in-country variations from one agro-ecological zone to another are scarce. In Africa, small hive beetle (Aethina tumida), large hive beetles (Oplostomus haroldi and Oplostomus fuligineus), wax moths (Galleria mellonella and Achroia grisella) and Varroa mite (Varroa destructor), are important pests capable of causing substantial economic damage [4,[6][7][8]. Among these, the Varroa mite remains the single most devastating pest to honeybees due to its ability to inflict direct damage via its hematophagous trophic habit and indirectly through the active transmission of honeybee viruses [4,6,9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, plant resins collected by honeybees are useful for hive construction and defense against foreign organisms (social encapsulation) and self-medication [12,13]. Therefore, vegetation phenology plays a central role in colony health both directly and indirectly by affecting the life stages of pests such as the hive beetles, which occur outside the hive environment [6,14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predicting Spatial Distribution of Key Honeybee Pests in Kenya Using Remotely Sensed and Bioclimatic Variables: Key Honeybee Pests Distribution Models

Makori

Fombong

Abdel‐Rahman

et al. 2017

IJGI

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Bee keeping is indispensable to global food production. It is an alternate income source, especially in rural underdeveloped African settlements, and an important forest conservation incentive. However, dwindling honeybee colonies around the world are attributed to pests and diseases whose spatial distribution and influences are not well established. In this study, we used remotely sensed data to improve the reliability of pest ecological niche (EN) models to attain reliable pest distribution maps. Occurrence data on four pests (Aethina tumida, Galleria mellonella, Oplostomus haroldi and Varroa destructor) were collected from apiaries within four main agro-ecological regions responsible for over 80% of Kenya's bee keeping. Africlim bioclimatic and derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) variables were used to model their ecological niches using Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt). Combined precipitation variables had a high positive logit influence on all remotely sensed and biotic models' performance. Remotely sensed vegetation variables had a substantial effect on the model, contributing up to 40.8% for G. mellonella and regions with high rainfall seasonality were predicted to be high-risk areas. Projections (to 2055) indicated that, with the current climate change trend, these regions will experience increased honeybee pest risk. We conclude that honeybee pests could be modelled using bioclimatic data and remotely sensed variables in MaxEnt. Although the bioclimatic data were most relevant in all model results, incorporating vegetation seasonality variables to improve mapping the 'actual' habitat of key honeybee pests and to identify risk and containment zones needs to be further investigated.

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Native honeybees as flower visitors and pollinators in wild plant communities in a biodiversity hotspot

2020

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Western honeybees (Apis mellifera L.), native to Europe and Africa, have been transported worldwide and are now one of the most important global crop pollinator species. Although the relative contribution of honeybees to global crop pollination is increasingly recognized, relatively little is known about their importance as pollinators in wild plant communities. The only remaining wild and unmanaged western honeybee populations are in Africa. We investigated the importance of honeybees as pollinators of diverse wild plant communities in two protected areas within the Maputaland–Pondoland–Albany biodiversity hotspot in South Africa. Sites were far from any known areas of beekeeping, and so all honeybees were most likely from wild colonies. Honeybees visited a large proportion of flowering plant species within these two communities (40% and 35%) and also provided a substantial proportion of visits to the plants they visited (40% and 32%, respectively). However, when pollinator importance indices (based on abundance and the size and purity of pollen loads) were calculated for a small subset of plants, honeybees were only important pollinators of 29% of the plants they visited. Our data provide a first step in determining the importance of honeybees as flower visitors and pollinators in wild plant communities and the potential impacts of honeybee declines on these highly diverse grassland ecosystems. Our work suggests that many plants in the grassland systems studied are visited by non‐Apis flower visitors and therefore that conservation efforts should also focus on these pollinator groups.

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Honeybee health in Africa—a review

Cited by 92 publications

References 138 publications

Risks and benefits of the biological interface between managed and wild bee pollinators

Risks and benefits of the biological interface between managed and wild bee pollinators

Predicting Spatial Distribution of Key Honeybee Pests in Kenya Using Remotely Sensed and Bioclimatic Variables: Key Honeybee Pests Distribution Models

Native honeybees as flower visitors and pollinators in wild plant communities in a biodiversity hotspot

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